The Virginian

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

The media insists that only "radical" Muslims are a danger to US constitutional law. Are the devout residents of Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iraq, Brunei, Pakistan, Nigeria, and other Muslim countries all "radical?" Would you consider stoning homosexuals to death - a practice in Muslim countries - radical or mainstream? Do you have a problem with putting apostates to death if they leave their religion - a practice in Muslim countries? Should women only be able to go out of their homes if accompanied by male relatives - a practice in Muslim countries? How about women wearing head coverings that hide their hair, or wearing a hijab? And what about alcoholic drinks, free speech, freedom to practice Christianity or Judaism? Notice what's happened to Christians in the part of the world where their faith was born.

Perhaps the differences will be minimal. In France, the Catholic churches will become mosques; in England, the village pubs will cease serving alcohol; in the Netherlands, the gay nightclubs will close up shop and relocate to San Francisco. But otherwise life will go on much as before. The new Europeans will be observant Muslims instead of post-Christian secularists but they will still be recognizably European: It will be like Cats after a cast change: same long-running show, new actors. Or maybe the all-black Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! is a better comparison: Pearl Bailey instead of Carol Channing, but the plot, the music, the sets are all the same. The animating principles of advanced societies are so strong that they will thrive whoever's at the switch.

But what if it doesn't work out like that?

Best not to ask. Because if you do, you'll get prosecuted, like Marine Le Pen. Best to talk about the dangers of "climate change", as the Pope is doing this week, even as in the heart of Christendom the post-Christian future is showing up at the express check-in. For us 19th century imperialists a hundred years past our sell-by date, the migrant army indicts almost every contemporary western worldview: from Iraq and Afghanistan come the product of a decade of ineffectual desultory "nation-building"; from Libya of frivolous pointless interventionism, and from Syria of non-interventionism; and from everywhere else from across the map of the ruthless demographic logic of what happens when an impoverished dysfunctional tide of humanity next door to a depopulating not-so-gated community of soft decadent poseurs has sufficient access to "social media" to figure out whose system is easiest to game. The west's cultural imperialism - the smart phones, the TV shows - do not spread western "values" but only western weakness: Look at how we live! And how close and undefended we are!

"I want to go to Germany". If everyone goes to Germany, there will be no Germany to go to. But Angela Merkel has given a generation of young men from the Mahgreb to the Hindu Kush their battle cry. And the lesson of this month is that no one will stop them.

Oh, don't get me wrong. There are real refugees in Europe, and there will be more: Ask a Jew in Toulouse, a gay in Amsterdam, an uncovered woman in Rosengard...

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

On April 23, Petraeus pled guilty to a single misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or materials under 18 USC §1924. Many in the intelligence community were outraged at the perceived “slap on the wrist” he received, at a time when the Justice Department was seeking very strong penalties against lesser officials for leaks to the media.

According to the law, there are five elements that must be met for a violation of the statute, and they can all be found in section (a) of the statute: “(1) Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, (2) by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, (3) knowingly removes such documents or materials (4) without authority and (5) with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location [shall be guilty of this offense].”

The Petraeus case meets those conditions. Does Clinton’s?

Clinton originally denied that any of her emails contained classified information, but soon abandoned that claim. So far, 150 emails containing classified information have been identified on her server, including two that included information determined to be Top Secret.

She then fell back on the claim that none of the emails in question was “marked classified” at the time she was dealing with them. The marking is not what makes the material classified; it’s the nature of the information itself. As secretary of state, Clinton knew this, and in fact she would have been re-briefed annually on this point as a condition of maintaining her clearance to access classified information.

Then there’s location. Clinton knowingly set up her email system to route 100 percent of her emails to and through her unsecured server (including keeping copies stored on the server). She knowingly removed such documents and materials from authorized locations (her authorized devices and secure government networks) to an unauthorized location (her server).

Monday, September 28, 2015

The essential feature of this disorder is a pervasive and unwarranted tendency . . . to interpret the actions of people as deliberately demeaning or threatening. Almost invariably, there is a general expectation of being exploited or harmed by others in some way. . . . The person may read hidden demeaning or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events. . . . Often these people are easily slighted and quick to react with anger or counterattack; they may bear grudges for a long time, and never forgive slights, insults or injuries. . . . They tend to avoid blame even when it is warranted. . . . They intensely and narrowly search for confirmation of their expectations, with no appreciation of the total context. Their final conclusion is usually precisely what they expected in the first place.

Global Warming update from Alaska

A major early snowstorm hit Northern Alaska. Fairbanks had 6.7″ yesterday (Fri.). That obliterated the previous daily snowfall record of 0.8″. Just north of Fairbanks, 9″ was recorded. Here’s more snowfall totals. A record low was set at Kodiak AK at 29 and small hail fell at Annette. Barrow reported 1″ of snow on the ground and Bettles had 3″. Gulkana had a low of 17. Arctic Village reported a temp. of 19 and a wind chill of +9. The high temp. of 34 in Fairbanks was 15 deg. cooler than the average high of 49 for 9/25.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Cruz has led the fight in the Senate against Planned Parenthood’s $500 million in taxpayer funding. He attributed its failure to Republican leadership’s decision to rule out a government shutdown.

“From a Democrat’s perspective,” Cruz said, “why would you let an appropriations bill pass if you can just wait until the end of the fiscal year, come right up to the edge of the cliff, and know Republican leadership will surrender? You don’t even have to guess on it. They promised you from the outset.”

Suppose you were a white person with a deep-seated dislike for black people, and you were intent on training your son to feel the same way. Suppose that, day after day, week after week, you instructed him to study the details of every instance of black-on-white crime. Say you advised your son to extrapolate from these incidents the notion that black people are generally dangerous, and that your zeal to present him with disturbing anecdotes along these lines never waned.

You would be wrong, in just about every possible way: statistically, sociologically, morally. You would be doing your son a gross and damaging disservice. For yourself you would invite, and earn, broad contempt. If your opinions became publicly known, you might well find yourself unwelcome in polite company and your job at risk. Indeed, the National Review contributor John Derbyshire was fired for expressing such sentiments in a blog post three years ago.

And yet for harboring roughly the same level of suspicion, fear, mistrust, distaste, and unease about whites as Derbyshire does about blacks, the essayist and blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates has found himself crowned America’s leading civic thinker.

A majority of elected Republicans, their advisers, conservative magazines and newspapers are nothing but junior partners to the left. They go on TV and repeat prepackaged conventional wisdom, hoping to get at least a small ovation. Trump is popular because we now live in a Kardashian nation and are one big cult of celebrity!

By mounting only impotent opposition, professional Republicans win the admiration of The New York Times, as they turn our country over to the left. All that matters is that they get to keep their offices, their salaries and their friends.

It's important for them to think of themselves as better than other people -- especially those yahoo proletarian conservatives.

Ironically, it's the Ivy League billionaire living a glamorous New York City life who has rocked the political world by speaking for ordinary Americans and insulting the powerful. Meanwhile, depressingly average Washington insiders insult ordinary Americans and suck up to the powerful.

When someone like Trump comes along and is actually serious about winning the very causes the GOP purportedly seeks to advance, he is seen as a disruptive force.

Most alarmingly, Trump brought up immigration. The Democrats thought they had this one in the bag -- they'd worked it all out with Republicans! Both sides had agreed: I won't talk about it if you won't.

There are now an estimated 3 million Muslims residing in the United States as citizens or with permanent legal status, and more than 250,000 new Muslim residents enter the U.S. per year as refugees, on work visas and student-based visas, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

A poll commissioned in May 2015 by the Center for Security Policy showed that 51 percent of American Muslims preferred that they should have their own Shariah courts outside of the legal system ruled by the U.S. Constitution. And nearly a quarter believed the use of violent jihad was justified in establishing Shariah.

"That would translate into roughly 300,000 Muslims living in the United States who believe that Shariah is 'The Muslim God Allah's law that Muslims must follow and impose worldwide by Jihad,'" writes Frank Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy.

Friday, September 25, 2015

How TARP created Trump

Commentary by Brian Westbury is worth repeating.

Back in 2008, rather than fix mark-to-market accounting, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen, Federal Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke, and other members of the financial market crisis team, chose to use a government-funded bazooka. A $700 billion bank bailout named The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

President Bush, who authorized this approach, later explained it by saying he “abandoned free market principles to save the free market.” That statement makes no sense. Either you believe in free markets, or you don’t. Violating a free market means it’s not free. More truthfully, the Bush team abandoned free markets because it was the politically expedient thing to do.

But, by doing this, Republican leadership undermined a sacrosanct belief of conservatism – markets are self-healing and government intervention creates unintended consequences. Abandoning this philosophy left voters literally adrift. Politics is just politics. The GOP ship has no anchor or rudder. Why vote for a philosophy if those who claim to support it do so only when it is convenient? The result: Donald Trump.

The subprime bubble was government failure, not free market failure. We knew back then, and we have the data now to prove that government had created the housing bubble. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy subprime loans. To fulfill government mandates, Fannie and Freddie “pushed” banks to make loans to low and moderate income families. This required accepting lower credit scores and smaller down-payments. And that’s exactly what the private sector did; fill government orders.

Then, when these loans inevitably started to go bad, mark-to-market accounting forced banks to write down assets that were still viable, to illiquid, virtually non-existent market prices. On paper, this destroyed private bank capital, forcing them into the arms of the government. Hank Paulsen knew this, but refused to change the rule. Instead, he used massive government intervention and justified it by saying the market would fail without it. He didn’t believe in free markets.

What no one talks about is the fact that the S&P 500 fell an additional 40% after TARP was passed. The $700 billion didn’t save the banks or the economy. In fact, the $700 billion was sucked up by mark-to-market losses, which would have continued indefinitely without a change in rules. Thank the Lord that this happened in March 2009 when Congress forced the Accounting Board to fix it. That’s when the market and the economy bottomed, not when government flooded the system with money.

Nonetheless, the philosophical damage was done. Government grew, TARP was used to justify passage of Dodd-Frank financial regulation. But most importantly, it created a narrative that the private sector, and fat cat bankers, needed a government bailout. This was a huge political mistake that the GOP has yet to recover from.

The GOP created a “mosh pit” of beliefs that elevates personal desires, inconsistent thinking, an interventionist government, a mistrust of private institutions, fear of our own neighbors, and celebrity above consistent philosophy and trust in our fellow man. And they have governed like that ever since, refusing to use the power of the purse to stop Obamacare (even though they said that the healthcare law would destroy America) and refusing to use scandal at the VA to show how bad government run healthcare really is. Ending one-half the Sequester, and claiming it was conservative to do so, was also nonsense. Don’t misunderstand, no one is going into the voting booth with TARP, itself, on their mind. What they know is that the GOP is just another political party who abandons philosophy for expediency.

And this has far reaching effects. If the GOP doesn’t trust banks, why is President Obama wrong when he says we shouldn’t trust private health insurers or power plants? If the GOP can’t stand up and defend free markets and its supposed core principles, how can it ever stand up to political arguments from the left?

Unfortunately, this argument will fall on deaf ears to many because it seems so out of sync with the narrative that politicians of both sides want you to believe. The GOP will not admit it made a mistake with TARP, neither will those who supported it, like The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page. And the Democrats believe in big government and evil corporations, so they love this, just like they loved the Great Depression – Happy Days Are Here Again!

In the meantime, the establishment GOP, when it had complete control of government, grew the government. And, now, that it controls the Senate and the House, but does not have a super majority, it says, well, we need to play along so we can get a GOP president in the White House. Then they will cut the size of government. In other words, they have no real principles except a desire for power.

What they do have is lots of lung power for blasting Donald Trump. But isn’t it interesting that they say he isn’t a real conservative? Neither are they. I’m old enough to know a real conservative when I see one, and the current leadership is not conservative.

They are right that Donald Trump has no true guiding philosophical principles, at least none that are visible. “Making good deals” is not a principle, and it’s not even a strategy, it’s a tactic. On the Democrat side, Bernie Sanders is a socialist who doesn’t trust the private sector. Senator Sanders is attracting crowds because of his principles, winning political points when he claims the GOP only cares about bailing out fat cats. He has a point. Donald Trump is attracting crowds with tough talk even if it’s incoherent from a philosophical point of view, because the GOP and the President aren’t tough.

Neither candidate can “fix” the economy, not with their current proposals. But, voters don’t have a clear vision of what the US economy needs to be fixed, because the GOP pulled up the philosophical anchor. So, the next time the GOP claims Donald Trump isn’t reflective of conservative values, they ought to look in the mirror. They created him. The only way out is for Paul Ryan, George Bush, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, Hank Paulson and every other GOP member that supported TARP to admit it was a mistake.

The way to beat Donald Trump is to attack the Establishment GOP, not cozy up to it. Even John Kasich seems to understand this. Trump is the result of a vacuum in principled leadership. A rudderless ship, or a ship with no anchor in a storm, creates fear. True leadership has an anchor, a rudder. It’s time to elect a real conservative as president. Someone who can lead the American people back to a consistency of thought that supports free markets and fights against government growth. A true conservative GOP candidate will run against the establishment, pointing out its failure to hold any real philosophical ground. That will be the winning strategy come November 2016.

Only about 450 of its 800 or so residents actually hold citizenship, according to a 2012 study by the Library of Congress. That study said citizens are either church cardinals who reside in the Vatican, the Holy See’s diplomats around the world, and those who have to reside in the city because of their jobs, such as the Swiss Guard.

Spouses and children who live in the city because of their relationship with citizens — including the Swiss Guard and workers such as the gardener — have also been granted citizenship. But that means few of the Vatican’s citizens are women.

The white Vatican plane was the first to touch down, winner by several lengths. No matter where or when, it always managed to get there first. As if they kept it ready, night and day, for instant takeoff, loaded with medicines, with Dominicans in jeans, and with pious pronouncements. It must have flown faster than sound, at the speed of symbols, no doubt. To equip it, Pope Benedict XVI, impoverished by his predecessor’s whim, would sell his tiara and his Cadillac.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

But Peter Baker of the New York Times says that president Obama seems reluctant to take responsibility for anything, arguing he is not to blame for the Syrian mess, having been a skeptic of his own policies from the beginning...

Under these circumstances it’s only natural to get the jitters when the administration says it’s going to fix things. It’s almost as if they don’t know what the word means. In an exchange that purportedly showed the president’s superior acumen over Mitt Romney, Obama told the former governor how silly he was to ever think Russia would be a problem again....

If anyone had told Candy Crowley on that debate evening that three years later Russia would have an army in Ukraine, an expeditionary airbase in Syria; that Europe would be beseiged by millions of Africans and Middle Easterners; that China stood to inherit Afghanistan at the cost of American lives and treasure — and that there would be more watchtowers in Europe than in Harry Lime’s day who would have believed them?

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

There is little to no curiosity among our media elite about how a Democratic candidate for president is able to campaign on a shrinking middle class, record highs of unemployment, record lows of workforce participation, record wage stagnation, and record entitlement dependency, while a Democratic president simultaneously travels around the country touting his economic success on all counts. How is it allowed to go unnoticed that this candidate suggests that economic growth was better under Richard Nixon than under Barack Obama?